Saturday, April 28, 2012

Google Drive is a simple but nifty syncing program which adds a folder to your desktop, phone or tablet and plops all your online files within Google Docs and make them available offline. Syncing takes place when online. It's available for Windows and Android platforms currently. iOS users will have to wait until Google releases that version.

If you have a Gmail account, then you have Google Docs. Google Drive comes with free 5GBs of storage but for $30 a year ($2.50 a month), users get 25GB to use for Google Drive and Picasa, plus 25GB of Gmail storage. This is strong competition with Dropbox, Box and SkyDrive.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Microsoft has always been a sort of "closed door" when it comes to it's programs and coding.

Historically the company has closely guarded it's software code so products such as Office and Windows can't be copied.

So when the Windows giant announced last week the creation of the wholly owned unit, "Microsoft Open Technologies Inc." it came to a surprise for the tech industry and some scratching thier heads. "Huh?...Microsoft and open source?"

The idea is for MS to more quickly release such programs and ensure existing Microsoft products are compatible with open-source software. And it makes sense.

With stiff competition from companies which have produced fine open source software such as Google (Android), Mozilla (FireFox), and Linux it was inevitable that Microsoft had to acknowledge open-source in a real way.

There's a great article about the subject at the Wall Street Journal here.

When you open Windows Explorer from the Taskbar in Windows 7, it defaults to the Libraries view. You might want to set it to a different location that is more commonly used, such as the Documents or Pictures folder.

Today we'll see how to change the target path to allow you to customize which location opens by default.

Set Windows Explorer Startup Location

To change the default startup location for the Windows Explorer Taskbar icon, if you have no Explorer screens open, hold down the Shift key, right-click the Explorer icon, and select Properties.

Windows Explorer Properties opens up and you’ll want to click on the Shortcut tab so we can change the Target.

Lets change the Target to the Documents folder instead:

Copy and paste this into the field:

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /n,::{450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103}

Now click Apply

Now when you open Windows Explorer from the Taskbar it defaults to My Documents :D

You can set it to other locations if you know the GUID (Globally Unique Identifiers) for the object or location you want it to default to.